Running your car on cooking oil?

[Craig]

My wife and I were watching Myth Busters last night, and they were busting all those gimmicks that supposedly boost your fuel economy.

They also decided to test another "myth": Taking used cooking oil, filtering it, and without any alteration to a vehicle, using it as fuel. The filter was crude, nothing fancy. Literally just poured the oil through a filter to get out the loose stuff.

The car ran on it...in fact, the fuel economy was only 10% less than gasoline.

Is anyone aware of possible negative effects cooking oil could have on your engine?

 

[Josiah]

Have you seen this thread yet? Its related to the to what your saying and I found it to be quite interesting. I think if you wanted to run a diesel car or truck on vegetable oil you can, but you would need a bio diesel conversion kit first. For what it's worth I know a lot of people in the Pacific northwest use BioDiesel and seem to be doing well with it. My father in law has a big dodge diesel truck and wants to try using vegetable oil with a conversion kit.

Also, this local Seattle guy has some interesting looking things on his website about making biodiesel.

 

[VictorBravo]

Yes, it runs OK in diesel engines, but don't try it in your gasoline engine--unless you want to spend a lot of time cleaning injectors, fuel lines, jets, whatever.

Also, as Josh pointed out, a good filtration system is a must for reliable use. Sure, you can filter oil once and run it through a diesel engine, but over time you'll be changing filters a lot more often if it is not processed a bit more.

And, yes, it is not unusual to see in our region.

 

[Craig]

Yes, it runs OK in diesel engines, but don't try it in your gasoline engine--

That is a very important tid-bit that was left out of the Myth-Busters episode...the car they used had a diesel engine, but it was nowhere explained why they chose a diesel vs gasoline engine. In fact, reading up on diesel engines, it should not be terribly shocking that cooking oil worked without any alteration to the car...as diesel engines were originally designed to run on peanut oil! I never knew that.

 

[forgivenmuch]

The cool thing is that it is possible with your diesel converter to have a switch which can change the engine from diesel to oil and back again as often as you'd like. This way if you are ever running low on veggie oil, it is still possible to use diesel.

 

[coramdeo]

I have am aquaintance who had a race car (sprint, I think) . He pulled it to the track with an old ambulance (used all the drawers, and bins for tools and parts, etc.) It was diesel powered and he made his own fuel by cooking used grease collected from fast food resturants in an electric hot water heater and a filter which yielded a lanolyn like substance and the fuel. The exhaust smelled like french fries.

 

[Skyler]

I have am aquaintance who had a race car (sprint, I think) . He pulled it to the track with an old ambulance (used all the drawers, and bins for tools and parts, etc.) It was diesel powered and he made his own fuel by cooking used grease collected from fast food resturants in an electric hot water heater and a filter which yielded a lanolyn like substance and the fuel. The exhaust smelled like french fries.

Better than smelling like... well, diesel exhaust.

 

[LawrenceU]

I've done it in my F250 7.3 litre several times. It must be filtered very well. A heated filtering system is best. I wish my friend who had the filter hadn't moved. I plan on making my own soon. It really is not that difficult.

 

[Rich Koster]

I work in the transportation industry. A local vendor is trying to get us to convert to soy/veggie diesel fuel. The reason most will not adopt it is that it is not cost effective to retrofit older vehicles with fuel heaters for winter or buy additives to avoid retrofit. Have you ever seen what happens to cooking oil when it gets cold, it gels quicker than petrol diesel.

 

[Scottish Lass]

I work in the transportation industry. A local vendor is trying to get us to convert to soy/veggie diesel fuel. The reason most will not adopt it is that it is not cost effective to retrofit older vehicles with fuel heaters for winter or buy additives to avoid retrofit. Have you ever seen what happens to cooking oil when it gets cold, it gels quicker than petrol diesel.

Haven't seen it personally, but I did see the news tidbit last month when a fleet of school buses couldn't start for this reason!

 

[SRoper]

One of the elders at our church modified his truck to have two tanks, one for diesel and one for cooking oil. He can switch tanks on the fly if he runs out of cooking oil or he needs more power (I think diesel has a higher energy density than cooking oil). He picks up the used cooking oil from a local cafeteria and filters it at home.